


room for one more troubled soul

by GuardianKarenTerrier



Series: Week Two: AU [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Found Family, Gen, anarka who left you in charge anyway this was a bad decision, childhood AU, liberty!adrien, liberty!adrien is a tag now because it happened WAY more often than i had planned, listen i know exactly what niche i wanna fill okay, poorly attempted piracy, runaway adrien agreste, sleepover, sleepover on a BOAT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-18 20:04:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20197387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianKarenTerrier/pseuds/GuardianKarenTerrier
Summary: When he's ten Adrien sneaks out of the house.  It isn't the first time he's snuck out, but it is the first time he isn't immediately caught.He doesn't mean to end up at the Seine any more than he means to end up anywhere in particular.He tumbles to a halt at the brightly-coloured boat he finds there.It looks like a pirate ship.  It looks like a pirate ship, but this is the Seine, it has to be, he can see the locks on the bridge from here-"Oi, did I miss one of you lot?" a woman calls, hanging over the boat's railing, and Adrien looks around in confusion for a moment before realising she's talking to him.  "Well, come aboard, love, we haven't got all day! We hoist anchor in five minutes, with or without ye!"





	room for one more troubled soul

**Author's Note:**

> for the childhood au prompt for adrienaugreste, and thank you to shinobicyrus for beta'ing! 
> 
> this one. kind of got away from me.

When he's ten Adrien sneaks out of the house. It isn't the first time he's snuck out, but it _is_ the first time he isn't immediately caught. 

He waits- he's learned to wait- until there's work being done on the mansion one day, until his father is busy supervising the workers and his mother is busy fretting over whether his father is supervising them too _ much_, and his bodyguard's attention is divided and Nathalie is hovering somewhere behind his parents and there's no one left to pay attention to _ him_.

The workers are still going in and out of the gate enough, and Adrien is small enough, that he's able to dart through it before it can close. He's fast, he's always been fast, and no one sees him. 

He doesn't know where he's going, really, but he's so excited to be outside on his own that he doesn't actually _ care_. 

He's lost within minutes, but he doesn't really mind that. He's felt so stifled for so much of his life that the idea he could be _ anywhere _ right now is exhilarating rather than frightening. He never did catch what his parents were having done to- installed in?- the mansion, but he knows that it's keeping them busy enough that it could be _ hours _ before anyone notices him missing, before anyone thinks to check his room and discovers he's not simply reading quietly or playing video games by himself or practising piano like he's supposed to be.

He doesn't mean to end up at the Seine any more than he means to end up anywhere in particular.

He tumbles to a halt at the brightly-coloured boat he finds there. 

It looks like a pirate ship. It looks like a pirate ship, but this is the Seine, it _ has _ to be, he can see the locks on the bridge from _ here _-

"Oi, did I miss one of you lot?" a woman calls, hanging over the boat's railing, and Adrien looks around in confusion for a moment before realising she's talking to _ him_. "Well, come aboard, love, we haven't got all day! We hoist anchor in five minutes, with or without ye!"

Adrien is sheltered, but not enough that he doesn't know getting onto a boat with strangers who have just declared they're about to leave is a terrible idea. 

There are other kids his age on the deck. There are _ lots _ of other kids his age on deck. One of the boys has his head bent close to a girl with pink hair, both of them arguing energetically over a map. The boy keeps jabbing a finger at something on it and the girl is saying, in a tone of fond exasperation, "Yeah, I _ know _ Kim, but trust me that's just Juleka's handwriting in the corner-"

"There's other handwriting on the map," Kim protests, pointing at a different part of it. "See? You just don't like admitting when you're wrong!"

The girl swats him on the arm with said map. "There's other people in Juleka's family!"

Adrien ducks down the loading plank before he can have second thoughts.

The woman is not kidding about being about to leave; Adrien feels the boat start to shudder away from shore almost before he's found his balance. He stumbles slightly, in fact, and two kids who had been sticking close to a corner both reach out to steady him. 

"Hey, wait," another boy says, tilting his head to peer up at Adrien from beneath his cap. Adrien's eyes keep catching on that cap- it's a really bright red, and Adrien _ loves _ bright colours, he's put as many bright colours into his room as he could get away with just to try and alleviate the stark black and white of the rest of the mansion. "I don't think I know you? Dude, who are you?"

The girl blinks, tilting her head in an eerie echo of her friend. "You kind of look familiar...? Are you in one of the other classes?"

Adrien doesn't really want to lie, but they're still close to shore and he doesn't want to be kicked back off the boat either. He starts to say yes, yes he is, but he trips on his words and stutters too badly for it to constitute a real answer. 

Oddly enough, the girl brightens at that.

She reaches out and grasps his wrist and tugs him further into the shelter of the corner before he can react to the idea of someone else reaching out to him at all.

"I'm Marinette," she says, eyes shining as she smiles at him. "This is Nino. That's Kim and Alix over there, and this boat belongs to Juleka's family, her mom is taking a bunch of us on a trip. Juleka is inside with Rose already, I think, and Ivan and the rest couldn't make it and Mylene gets seasick and- and you should come, too!"

"What?" Adrien says blankly, reeling a little even though that's what _ he _ wants, too, that's the whole reason he crept onto the boat in the first place. 

Nino squares his shoulders. It doesn't make him look any more intimidating. It sort of makes him look like an angry wet mouse. "We're on a pirate ship, right? Alix and Kim already have a treasure map! And- and pirates kidnap people, so we should totally-" He stops and blinks at Adrien. "Wait, do you _ want _to be kidnapped?"

"Nino!" Marinette hisses. "You can't just _ ask _people if they want to be kidnapped!"

"Why not?" Nino demands hotly, but at almost the same time Adrien says, "_Yes_," desperately, and both of them stop to stare at him.

"Yes?" Marinette says slowly. 

"_Yes_," Adrien insists again, his heart in his throat. "Yes, kidnap me, take me with you, I _ want _to come with-"

Nino's eyebrows go up so far they vanish under the brim of his hat.

Marinette straightens, eyes flashing with determination again. "Okay! That settles it, then, we're kidnapping you!"

"Wait, does it count if he's _ volunteering_?" Nino asks her, scratching the back of his neck as Adrien shifts restlessly, gaze darting around. There may be a number of kids on the boat (which he's both excited and anxious about, because he's _ never _ been around this many people his age, not even at charity events); but eventually the adult who let him on is going to notice he isn't supposed to be here.

"If you're kidnapping me, then you should get me inside," he suggests, a little desperately. "So you don't get caught."

“Good idea!” Marinette says fervently, and at the same time Nino says, “Is it weird that you’re _ helping _ us kidnap you? ‘Cause it feels kinda weird.” 

Marinette ignores that, so Adrien cautiously does too. 

The inside of the boat is _ amazing_, at least as far as Adrien's concerned. It's small and parts of it are sectioned off with nothing more than curtains and the whole place is bright and cheerful and far less dark than he'd expected it to be on the inside.

There are _ more _ kids inside. Two girls barely look up from where they're arguing over a journal, sprawled across the sleeping bags littered across the floor.

"I still don't see why we can't use pig Latin," the dark-haired girl is saying, scratching something out in the journal.

"Because it wouldn't be _ ours," _ the blonde girl says, and it's too cheerful to really count as a whine. "Please, Juleka, it'll be great! We can have all _ kinds _ of private conversations like Nino and Marinette and Max do!"

"You know they're all using Morse code, right? They didn't make up Morse code, Rose."

Adrien turns to his new- friends?- curiously. "You- you know Morse code?"

Nino grins and taps out a message on the nearest wall. Adrien's rusty, not having had anyone to practice with, but he catches the _ yes _ at least. 

"It was Max's idea and I don't know how we got involved," Marinette tells him, shifting in the doorway before nodding over to the rest of the sleeping bags. "Um, technically we're supposed to have all the girl's sleeping bags in Juleka's area and the boy's in Luka's?"

Juleka snorts and flops over onto her back, nudging Rose with her shoulder as she goes. "Oh _ that _ isn't gonna happen. Like, at all, we're just gonna throw the curtains open in the first five minutes." She blinks up at them, apparently registering Adrien for the first time. "Hey, wait, who are you?"

"We're kidnapping him!" Marinette says proudly. "If we're all gonna be pirates, we should start it off properly."

"Also I, uh, I think we totally forgot to ask his name." Nino turns to him with an expectant look. 

Adrien swallows, hoping really hard that none of them are interested enough in magazines to know who he is. He's only really been in the one so far, and most people their age wouldn't be flipping through fashion magazines at all, right?

He still knows better than to give his full name. As it is he nearly makes up a fake name on the spot, but he doesn't want to lie to them. "I'm Adrien, it's- nice to meet you? Thanks for kidnapping me."

Juleka blinks. "I don't think this counts as kidnapping."

Marinette crosses her arms with a huff. "It totally does, we kidnapped him fair and square."

Nino half raises his hand, awkwardly. "Uh, dude _ did _ sorta volunteer. Can you volunteer to be kidnapped?"

"_Yes_," Marinette insists, but her certainty is clearly wavering now. "He said to kidnap him!"

Juleka props herself up on her elbows and then shakes her hair out of her face. "No, if he came aboard on his own it's not kidnapping, he's a stowaway. Mom said so, when Luka brought a puppy home."

"You have a puppy?" Adrien asks, brightening.

"Rose does, we couldn't keep her," Juleka corrects.

Rose beams. "Her name is Freedom since Luka snuck her on the Liberty and then she got kicked off!"

Adrien is starting to have a hard time keeping up with the rapid conversation and topic changes. He slides a glance over to Nino and Marinette. Marinette still looks a little put out that Juleka's shot down her determination to kidnap Adrien, but Nino seems more relaxed than before.

Rose clambers over Juleka and sways to her feet, bracing herself against the wall as the boat shudders and starts to move. 

Adrien's heart starts beating faster again. The others seem enthusiastic about taking him with so far, but they're still only at the edge of the river- if he gets caught now he'll definitely get kicked off the boat _ and _ in trouble. 

He's definitely in trouble already but he at least wants the trouble to be _ worth _it.

"We need to make sure he's a _ proper _ stowaway, then," Rose declares, reaching down to haul Juleka up after her. "We gotta hide him. Juleka-"

"Luka's room," Juleka says, decidedly. "His trundle bed's still empty."

Marinette blinks. "Wait, what's in yours?"

"Spare mattress for when I stay over," Rose says brightly. "It has flowers on it!"

Nino laughs as he ducks past Adrien and tugs one of the curtains further aside. "Of course it does. Hey, Luka!"

The boy who rolls off his bed has to be the coolest person Adrien has ever met. His hair is an electric blue, and one of his ears is even _ pierced. _ Standing near Juleka it’s immediately obvious they could only be siblings. "Hey yourself. What's up?"

Nino gestures at Adrien, who's somehow ended up shuffled in between Nino and Marinette. "We need to hide a stowaway and Rose is already using Juleka's trundle bed."

"That won’t do, you need a _ proper _ place to stow away." Luka turns to his bed and kicks a part of it that looks no different than any other part of it. To Adrien's bemusement, a drawer slides out from underneath. 

"Luka," Juleka says, patiently. "We can't get Adrien in there with your guitar." She tilts her head. "Or the keyboard. Wait, we have a keyboard?"

Luka kneels down and starts pulling things out of his trundle bed- the guitar and keyboard, a songbook, several loose pencils and sheets of paper, scattered guitar picks. "He'll fit."

"Wait, doesn't he get a say in this?" Nino asks suddenly. "Adrien, dude, you okay with this plan?"

Adrien is trying hard not to think about Luka _ shutting _ the drawer again, because he _ really _ doesn't like that idea, but his dislike of enclosed spaces isn't as strong as his desire to stay secret for long enough that he _ can't _ be kicked back off their boat. He still doesn't know where they're going but the boat is definitely moving now. If anything it's picking it speed.

Marinette knocks her shoulder against his. "Adrien? We can figure out something else?" She tilts her head. "Is there someone else we can hide, Juleka?"

"The galley," Luka and Juleka answer together. 

Marinette blinks. "Won't we _ need _ that?"

Luka shakes his head. "Mom stocked up on snacks and stuff, I don't think we're going to do a lot of cooking. We can just move again once everyone's inside for the night. There's enough of us that if we just have Adrien sleep in the middle Mom'll never notice there's another person."

"Okay, but that doesn't solve the problem of her noticing him _ now, _" Juleka points out, dryly. "She's going to remember to stop and do a headcount at some point after last time."

"Um?" Adrien says, without quite meaning to.

"Oh, we lost Marc and Nathaniel for a while last time," Rose says absently. 

"It's okay, we found them eventually," Juleka assures him.”I don’t even think _ they _noticed for most of it.”

Adrien does end up hiding in the trundle bed, but they don't shut it. They have a fiercely whispered argument about it first but in the end Adrien climbs in and then Luka throws his blanket over him. 

Adrien lies very still, wondering what exactly the plan is from here and how long he's supposed to stay hidden, when Rose lifts one corner and offers him fruit snacks. 

"I think the stowaway is supposed to stay hidden," Marinette says, but she scoots back into the corner between the wall and the bed and Rose hands her fruit snacks, too. 

Adrien sits back up, blanket draped around his shoulders now, as Juleka shrugs. "Mom's gonna be distracted out on deck with Kim and Alix for a while. They found the map right away."

"They know it isn't a real map, right?" Nino takes a spot beside Marinette as she reaches into a purse and draws out cookies, handing them around absently. 

Adrien is beginning to wonder if he should have brought food. Chloe's never brought food, and the only time he's given her any is if they were at the same charity event and swapping the food they didn't like when no one was looking, usually when they'd managed to escape and find a table to hide under for a while. 

Chloe likes the events more than he does, but not by very much, so they spend a lot of time trying to find tables to hide under.

"Of course it's a real map." Luka sounds offended. "All our maps are real maps, how else would we know where we're going?"

"With a GPS?" Nino says, taking his hat off and shaking his head. "Like the rest of us?"

Juleka drops back down on one of the sleeping bags draped across Luka's floor, yanking Rose down with her. They fall across each other in a tangle of limbs but Rose is giggling so Adrien assumes she's okay. "We have one but it's for emergencies only. Mom says getting lost is part of adventure."

Adrien finds himself immediately in love with that phrase. 

No one does come to check on them, so no one suggests Adrien lie back down. He stays seated in the trundle bed with the blanket slipping off his shoulders and after a while Nino climbs in next to him and Luka suggests they play a game and they end up teaching Adrien to play Uno. 

"I don't know how to play," he admits, rubbing the back of his neck and averting his eyes. He waits for them to ask why, but-

Rose lights up. "Oh, you'll love it, it's really fun! We can teach you, it's easy!"

Adrien picks up Uno fast enough that after a few rounds Rose begs to teach him other games as well. They play Pictionary, and Luka and Adrien actually win that; by then it's dark and they've mostly forgotten that they were hiding Adrien at all. People are laughing and shouting and playfully shoving each other and Adrien's never felt so much like he was a _ part _ of something. He'd hoped for it when he'd done a photo shoot for the first time earlier in the week but then there hadn't been anyone else his age there. It was like the events and parties, only worse, because he didn’t even have Chloe to talk to. 

They're still deciding on what they should play after Pictionary when the two kids from the deck come tumbling in. 

The girl- Alix, he's pretty sure- pauses and stares at Adrien. 

He huddles a little closer under the blanket self-consciously as Nino climbs back out of the trundle bed. 

"Who're you?" Alix asks, sounding nothing more than curious. 

"We kidnapped him," Marinette says at the same time as Rose says, "A stowaway!"

"Aren't you supposed to like, lock stowaways up after you catch them, or make them walk the plank, or something?" Kim asks, scratching his head. 

"Yeah but we kidnapped him so we don't have to do any of that," Marinette says, stubbornly.

"He volunteered!" Nino gestures at Adrien, eyebrows disappearing into his hairline. "Dude literally said 'yes please kidnap me,' I don't think that counts!"

"It so counts!" Marinette insists.

"It does _ not- _"

"Mom's coming," Luka says, suddenly, and there's a flurry of movement from everyone as Adrien gets shoved unceremoniously back under the blanket and someone slides the trundle under the bed with him in it.

It's very warm and dark and close and he can hear his heart thudding in his ears as Luka and Juleka's mom says something and everyone choruses agreement, and then everyone talks over each other so loud and fast that he can't make out individual words. 

Adrien squeezes his eyes shut so tightly that he sees burst of colour behind his eyelids and tries not to breathe too loudly.

Kim and Alix's voices get louder, arguing energetically with- that _ has _ to be Luka's mom, but she seems happy to argue right back, and the other kids keep calling her Captain.

Eventually the Captain's voice fades away and someone yanks the drawer back open. 

Adrien bolts upright so quickly that he catches his shoulder against the bedframe, taking in such a sharp breath that he starts coughing.

"Whoa!" Luka and Marinette both reach out to steady him, Luka awkwardly adjusting his hold to account for Adrien's likely-bruising shoulder. 

"Dude, you okay?" Nino asks, scanning him as if checking for any other injuries.

Adrien nods, concentrating on the contact points between himself and Marinette and Luka until his breathing steadies. Their hands are warm against his side and shoulders and he's not used to people touching him like this. He's especially not used to suddenly having to ground himself like this.

"Why'd we hide him in a drawer if he's claustrophobic?" Alix wants to know. 

"I didn't know I was," Adrien croaks, shivering slightly, and Luka draws away slightly before Marinette helps him out of the trundle bed entirely. 

"The Captain went to get dinner," Alix confides, kicking one of the sleeping bags into another and rolling them together before dropping down to rest against the resulting bundle. "But she said we can't order pizza so we don't know what dinner is, she wouldn't say."

"Alix," Marinette says. "We are on a boat."

"So?"

"How would pizza even _ get _-"

Footsteps sound again outside the room's curtains. This time everyone moves just as rapidly, but instead of shoving Adrien under the bed they shove _ Kim _ under it and sleeping bags abruptly rain in Adrien's direction. He slinks as close to the wall as he can get as Nino and Marinette fight to get in front of him and Luka quickly flicks off the light.

"Now what are we doing?" the Captain asks, pausing in the doorway. She's holding several stacked trays and it looks like she's made sandwiches for everyone from what Adrien can see from where he's squashed against the wall behind the others.

"Blanket fort," Luka, Juleka and Rose all chorus. 

The Captain chuckles. "Fair enough. Remember, boys in Luka's room tonight, girls in Juleka's."

Adrien peeks out and suspects from the twitch in her smile that the Captain absolutely does not expect them to follow that rule. 

They absolutely don't, and he's not surprised. After everyone's devoured their sandwich (after everyone has torn off pieces to contribute to Adrien, because the Captain didn't make enough to account for their stowaway), Alix nearly rips the curtain open as Kim and Rose gleefully pile all the sleeping bags together. 

"Aren't you all gonna get in trouble for this?" Adrien finally asks, feeling a little lost as he follows Nino out into the living room to scavenge for more pillows. Once Adrien had admitted to a feather allergy several of their original pillows had been hastily relocated to the girl's side of the room.

He thinks it's the girl's side, anyway. Alix doesn't seem willing to settle in any one place so she keeps moving around and occasionally displacing people, so it's hardly staying an even split.

"What, for this?" Nino asks, distractedly. "Nah, dude, we've done this before. The Captain doesn't _ actually _ expect us to stay in separate rooms, she's just gotta _ say _it. I think some of us did the first time?"

Adrien blinks, standing very still as Nino turns to stuff two massive pillows into his arms. "The first time?"

Nino nods enthusiastically. "Yeah! We wanted to go camping but it kept not working out, and then Juleka mentioned the Liberty to Kim, and he begged her to let us go and-" Nino shrugs. "It's sort of a class thing but not totally? Like, not everyone in the class wants to do it, and Marc's in a different class and Luka, you know, lives here, but this is the third year in a row now."

Adrien stops where he is, blinking. "You do this every year?" He hasn't seen any adults aside from the Captain and she's barely been to check on them. He has to assume she's spending most of her time steering the boat, but it's still a shocking lack of supervision.

"For the last couple, yeah." Nino picks up two more pillows and Adrien follows him back into Luka's room. 

Luka _ and _ Juleka's rooms, it's clear now. The curtains are wide open, destroying any barrier between the two, and though there definitely appears to be a separate sleeping bag for each person half of them are unzipped and spread haphazardly across the floor. Adrien drops his pillows when Nino does his and they join the scattered sets of belongings. 

Kim's thrown himself back out of the trundle bed and onto the heavily cushioned floor, sprawling out beside Luka's bed, and Alix is pointedly nudging him with her sneaker. "Do you gotta take up so much _ room_, dude?"

"Can't hear you, busy gettin' my beat-you-at-treasure sleep."

"Kim, dude, there's- there's so _ many _things wrong with what you just said." Nino rubs his forehead.

Marinette sits up from where she's been blinking down at Rose and Juleka's journal from earlier. "Hey, Adrien should be in the middle, that way if the Captain comes to check in it's easier to hide him."

"Good idea, Marinette," Luka says brightly, and Marinette grins.

Once they turn off the lights (with a lot of giggling and elbowing each other and mutters of "Shh!" and "No, that's _ my _ spot-") Adrien finds himself curled up tightly on top of someone else's sleeping bag, sharing blankets and smiling so hard it feels like it's going to crack his face. 

He's worried about going to sleep at first, because he isn't tired, but it quickly becomes apparent that neither is anyone else. Alix still hasn't picked a spot to settle down and she keeps arguing with Kim in harsh whispers, and Rose is curled up on Juleka's bed with her under the window trying to angle their journal into the light.

"Hey, Luka?" Marinette props herself up on her elbows on Nino's other side. "Do _ you _ know what we're doing tomorrow?"

Kim and Alix break off their hissed conversation long enough to say, "Treasure hunting," together and in sync, then resume.

Luka laughs, sitting back up against his bed. (Adrien's not sure because people aren't staying put but he thinks Kim is the one actually _ on _ the bed at this point). "Uh, I think she might be planning more of a sightseeing cruise? She's been complaining about the company ones recently, I think she wants to try and show them up."

Since no one's sleeping anyway, eventually they end up trying to watch movies on someone's phone- trying, because while at least a couple people have suggestions at first, it rapidly breaks down into cat videos and old Vines. 

Adrien's never had this much fun, even if he's starting to get a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he realises there's no way he hasn't been noticed missing by now. He can't go back right now even if he actually _ wanted _ to, though, it isn't like he can just hop back off of a _ boat _ and run home. 

He also doesn't really want to leave. He'd rather keep pretending both that he has this many friends and that he _ won't _ be in trouble. 

He doesn’t know exactly when he falls asleep, but he knows it’s to the sound of laughter and whispered conversations and _ friends _surrounding him. 

"Up and at'em, mateys, we've got a long haul today," the Captain cries brightly, sometime the next morning, and Adrien has the distinct impression that if the room had a true door she'd have kicked it dramatically open. 

Unfortunately, her sudden entrance means that no one reacts quite in time to hide Adrien. 

It would be one thing, maybe, if he had done the smart thing and tucked himself into a corner for the night, or even slept in the trundle bed so that they'd had the option to knock it shut quickly. 

(He'd suggested that, in fact. Nino and Luka had shut it down immediately, stubbornly pointing out that he'd been close to panic when they'd done it before).

Instead Adrien is in the middle of the room, made even more visible because at least half the others have playfully piled more blankets onto him at some point during the night. 

Adrien scrunches under them as fast as he can as Luka and Marinette both dive in front of him, but it's already too late. 

"Hmm, you're the straggler from yesterday, aren't ya." The Captain taps the wall thoughtfully. "You know, I don't think I've ever seen you before. That _ is _ a touch odd."

She doesn't recognise him. _ She doesn't recognise him_. 

Adrien breathes a silent sigh of relief. 

"We kidnapped him!" Kim says, proudly, and everyone groans. 

Adrien peers reluctantly out of the shelter of the blankets, since the cat's out of the bag now.

The Captain is shaking her head and looking stern, but the corners of her mouth keep twitching like she's trying hard not to smile. "Aye, well, I always knew at least some of ye'd be good at piracy. Now then, what are we askin' for your safe return?" She looks straight at Adrien, who freezes in renewed fear.

"But we're not asking for anything?" Nino says blankly. "Dude wanted to be kidnapped."

"Really, he's a stowaway!" Rose adds brightly.

The Captain laughs a little, moving far enough into the room to lean against a wall. "Oh, my. Well, then, stowaways are a different matter. Are you prepared to work for your keep, then, boy?"

Adrien blinks at her, more confused than ever. Finally he ventures, "Are you... _ actually _kidnapping me?"

"I think," she says dryly, "You lot have rather got that covered by yourselves. An' anyway, who didn't run away at least once as a kid? Builds character." She sighs, but it seems oddly theatrical. "But your own folks are probably real worried, kid. Wanna lemme know who they are so I can contact them?"

Adrien swallows, hard. He's suddenly acutely aware that _ everyone _ else is awake now, and most of them are listening. (Kim and Alix are busy having a pillow fight in the back of the room, giggling, but no one else has reacted to that so Adrien's choosing not to worry about it).

There's no way the Captain won't panic and send him straight home once he admits who he is.

Right?

"Kid?" The Captain puts her hands on her hips and tilts her head expectantly. "Look, you pretty much _ have _ to have been on board since last night, right? They're gonna be worried."

"Um," he says, very quietly, and to his surprise Nino takes his hand. After a moment of fierce whispering that he doesn't really hear over his pounding heart Marinette stubbornly takes the other one. "I'm- Adrien Agreste."

The room erupts in shouting. Adrien flinches, slamming his eyes shut, but to his surprise neither Nino nor Marinette let go of his hands. 

He becomes slowly aware that the Captain's voice is _ not _ one of those shouting. 

When he's finally brave enough to crack his eyes back open, she looks torn between amusement and _ delight_.

"Oh, kiddo," she says, shaking her head and beginning to laugh, then to cackle. "The Agreste kid, huh? Ha! Coulda _ told _ your folks keepin' you locked up wasn't gonna do them any favours!"

Adrien blinks, caught entirely off-balance.

Still chuckling, the Captain swipes at her eyes and straightens. "Yeah, all right, I'd better go contact them before they _ do _ go looking for kidnappers. Maybe call Roger too, just to cover my rear. You got any contact info, kid, or am I on my own there?"

Still baffled, Adrien shakes his head. 

She rolls her eyes, muttering. "'Course not. Don't let the kid out, so why would he need-" She sighs, but she doesn't sound upset. "All right. I'm gonna go look for the official Gabriel contact info, kids, so we'll be startin' a bit later than planned."

"You're not-" Adrien's voice is a lot squeakier than he would like. "You're not mad at me? I'm not in trouble?"

The Captain shakes her head and reaches out to ruffle his hair fondly. "Not with me, you're not. I'll admit to bein' proud you lot kept this a secret this long," she addresses to the room at large, and when Adrien glances around the other kids are brightening at the praise. 

Then the Captain winks at him. "And I think I'll point out, when I get in touch with your parents, that it would be awfully silly to pull you off the trip part way through. Might as well stick it out, right?" Her lips twitch. "I'll tell them it builds character or something."

The room erupts again, but in cheering this time. 

Adrien's not sure it will be so simple as the Captain makes it sound but he's grinning nonetheless. 

He never learns the details of the conversation, from either side, but whatever Anarka Couffaine says to his parents _ does _ convince them.

So thoroughly, in fact, that Adrien's invited back every year until he manages to attend school with his friends for the first time. By then he's been to the Liberty so often, and met so much of the rest of his friend's class, that he has no shortage of help sneaking out for what he thinks is going to be the last time.

(It is not. But he won't know that until he comes home and finds an unfamiliar box and a creature that is _ not _ a genie in his room one day).

**Author's Note:**

> i had trouble initially figuring out what the kids would call anarka but- she would totally just go for captain
> 
> title is from fall out boys alone together because i wrote most of the fic to that song


End file.
